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About: drudge report: abc turns programming over to obama 2009®

MO' analysis later after the show.

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Mark de LA says

~One wonders in whose perverted mind it is right to penalize those who are paying for their health insurance by taxing them in order to put more people in some kind of government run health insurance. It is another Robin Hood scheme. What it will do is increase the number of people who can't afford health insurance & drive them into the government lair. NB- the unions will love it because they can drop health insurance and drive it into the government pile; more money in their coffers.

Mark de LA says

seth 2009-06-16 15:00:55 12109

Well there is a long tradition of the president availing himself to the media to talk about American priorities. This started way back before we were born with Roosevelt's fire side chats etc. Usually now there is also time given to the other party. Drudge's spin is, me thinks, a bit myopic.

We'll see if the network follows it with the usual obligatory counter-spin by the opposite party. As I recall on Bush every time he spoke to the nation the demos had their own piece right afterwards.

Mark de LA says

~ bend over & spread your cheeks!

Mark de LA says

Seth says

The insurance industry is what we need reformed. Start with eliminating preexisting conditions. Thanks TheWeek for illustrating ...

Mark de LA says

Eliminating pre-existing conditions is similar to eliminating the ability to pay back a mortgage. Go down that road & oops you will have popped the insurance industry bubble & the companies will need bailouts or your money. Then the government will take it over & then ......

Insurance rules specify what reserves a company has to have (similar to banking) to pay out claims based on actuarial tables of how may people will be making claims statistically. Change the ratio or the rules & you & I will be paying for the difference.

Here is an article & website on the Government's ability to avoid fraud in Medicare.

source: ... Medi-Fraud The Weekly Standard Michael Goldfarb June 25th, 2009 Just as the Dems are trying to nationalize healthcare, within the Ways and Means Committee Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) is out with a new effort to highlight the rampant waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid -- and just how bad an idea it would be to simply create a far bigger Medicare-for-all system. His Medi-Fraud Alert and blog has some eye-popping facts and figures -- some estimates are as high as $500 billion per year in healthcare fraud. Major taxpayer $$$ down the drain

... Let's see we don't know where TARP has been going, and whether GM & Chrysler will actually make a profit. There are 2 bills now before congress which few voters will know about & Congress is likely to pass in a hurry over a holiday weekend but not read & there's already rampant fraud. Pretty soon nobody will give a shit. And those that do & can will go somewhere else. Remember the days of malaise in the late 70's with Jimmy Carter? It's BAAARAACK!

Seth says

source: MR repeats above
But the union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law would not pay the tax.

This bill has a long way to go. I doubt that the union exemption proposal is going to stay in the bill. It does not enen sound to me that it would be constitutional under the equal protection clause. Can you actually find it in the text of the proposed bill?

Mark de LA says

source: ...

The best chance for compromise legislation on health care may be a plan under construction in the Senate Finance Committee that would pay for a public plan in part by taxing some worker health benefits.

But the union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law would not pay the tax.

With cost estimates already as high as $1.6 trillion, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has proposed paying for the bill in part by taxing health care benefits for workers who earn more than $100,000, or $200,000 for married couples, according to those familiar with the discussions.

Baucus is also weighing a tax based on the value of health care benefits that exceed a yet-to-be determined cap. A tax on benefits that exceed the cap by a mere $3,000 could amount to $750 in taxes annually for a worker who earns as little as $34,000, say experts.

...

The president & the Congress are naturally part of the ruling elete & are exempt from all the rules.

Mark de LA says

Well at least not everyone's going to get hypnotized:

source: ... President Obama's town hall meeting on health care delivered a sickly rating Wednesday evening.

The one-hour ABC News special "Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America" (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour. The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.

...

(we'll see if the network revises the ratings later on)

Seth says

MR 2009-06-25 12:15:10 12109

seth 2009-06-25 11:52:18 12109

source: MR says
Eliminating pre-existing conditions is similar to eliminating the ability to pay back a mortgage.

huh? If insurance companies don't have to insure preexisting conditions, then people who get sick without coverage are literally fucked.

Not exactly, the rules are a little more simplistic than your non sequitur. I know that whatever it is now if you alter the coverage rules for the business of insurance, just like Fannie Mae & FreddieMac did to alter the normal business rules for mortgages, you will create a bubble or bankruptcy condition. Remember this is an industry participating in 17% of the economy. The government only has yours & my money & what it can get in credit from the financial sector & China, Middle East etc. Somebody has to pay those claims. The rest of us will lose capital to grow the regular producing businesses because the government is competing for that money in the economy while Obama & Congress panders US into second-rate health-care. The reform is needed in the legal system & malpractice area first.

So then are you one of the people who say do nothing ... do not alter the rules under which insurance companies operate at all ... ?

Mark de LA says

seth 2009-06-25 11:52:18 12109

source: MR says
Eliminating pre-existing conditions is similar to eliminating the ability to pay back a mortgage.

huh? If insurance companies don't have to insure preexisting conditions, then people who get sick without coverage are literally fucked.

Mark de LA says

Not exactly. Be aware of what you are doing. Catastrophic care is covered for most people who really need it. If you were aware of the bubble in the housing industry because of regulations that you did not even get to vote on, would you have supported it? The current Obamacare is slated to cost 1.6 trillion over 10 years & will only insure 1/3 of those who do not have health insurance now. Is that worth it? Sometimes you have to walk away from the price of a item that you want to buy. I suggest Obama do that on health-care as proposed. In the end the Health-Care industry must be excised from the economic domain. But, for now just declaring it so & implementing by force & fiat would be rude & disastrous. What must happen depends upon a new class of doctors, hospitals, para-health professionals & technical breakthroughs. I don't see an expanded Medicare as the answer. First & foremost the thermometer should be inserted into the ass of Government. The executive branch & all others should be forced into having the same quality & live by the same rules as those who must because of their voting & scheming. Then we will know that it is not just the elite ruling class telling us what to do. You know, do as I say - not as I do.

Mark de LA says

It is not a crisis! Very few can't get some kind of care. Get rid of the crisis Obamamentality & focus on the whole picture. While getting everyone in the US to own their own home might have been a laudable goal - how it happened was ignoring business reality & eventually lead to bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers & others. The same can happen in Insurance & Health-Care.

Inspired by threefolding I would suggest creating several different classes of capital (or money) which can not be exchanged with each other. One would be used for the health industry & pharmaceuticals. From that capital we would create the future of medicine. It will be capital with a heart & soul, figuratively speaking. I suspect that those who really want to help the sick & heal & invent new drugs & care & nurse the sick are not motivated by money & riches. Support those kind of people & enterprises to the extent that they are devoted to the tasks of healing with what they need from this new kind of money. Bill Gates' Foundation is a great example of money given to support results in AIDS in Africa & other areas. Another kind of money can be invented that works in the domain of buildings & land. These two can negotiate with each other for the building & allocation of land for hospitals & hospital equipment., etc. More to be discussed later in group threefold society.

Mark de LA says

seth 2009-06-25 14:23:02 12109

Well i wanted to have a interesting discussion about health care, not paw through all the fears and twists of recent conservative bloviation. The jumbled egg salad cumming out of your pen is is just about as pertinent to solving skyrocketing health insurance as is the idea that Rush advanced is pertinant to Sanford going to Argentina. I'll just leave you to it.

Apparently about all you can do is diss & insult the messenger. You are just incapable of talking about the substance itself; your lack of understanding of insurance & economics is blatant. Your picture is irrelevant. You must have forgotten how to think without your WhiteHouse talking points in front of you. Something new & you go way off track. At this point I am losing my interest in talking to you since for the last few items this dissing has been all you have been able to come up with. May you enjoy the eternal pleasure of just your own point of view & may the hangover in a few years begin to wake you up!

<== Seth adrift on his own sea of RWG

Seth says

For me the ABC special did not make the case. The question and answer format would have been ok if i had something tangential in front of me. Then too they ran out of time and didn't even get the the important questions about the private plan. But it didn't seem like an infomercial. Hard questions were asked ... im not so sure they were answered.

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